Although Arsenal insiders were desperately trying to say the club had negotiated a good deal for Fabregas, Wenger, who saw Liverpool bank £50 million for Fernando Torres, said: “We sold Cesc for a reduced fee.

“If Cesc is for sale and you can make an auction between Real Madrid, Chelsea and Manchester City, you will certainly get more money, but he just wanted to go to Barcelona.

"If he was on the market to any club we would have got more money, but we did want to get a
decent fee. What is good is that you call multi-million pound players
‘cheap’. I don’t know any more.”

We sold Cesc [Fabregas] for a reduced fee

Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger

The Gunners
value the total package at £40 million. They receive £14.5m now and
£14.5m in October; Fabregas has waived £4m in his contract and
Barcelona have agreed to pay add-ons if they win two La Liga titles and
the Champions League in the next five years.

Arsenal also have first option to buy Fabregas back if Barca ever sell and have a 50 per cent sell-on clause.

Barcelona
have also agreed not to pursue compensation claims or sell-on fees for
youngsters Hector Bellerin and Jon Toral, who joined Arsenal this
summer.

“Yes, we lost a world-class player and
we are sad about it. We did fight to keep him, but in the end we have as
well to respect the desire of the player,” added Wenger.

After
signing a five-year contract at Barca, Fabregas said: “At Arsenal,
there were finals and semi-finals but we always lacked that little extra
push to win something. That was hard to take.

“It was not that we didn’t win titles, it was that we kept going through the same routine, us messing up.

“That is the biggest regret I will have in my career, not to be able to lift a trophy as Arsenal captain.”